The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

#OccupyThisPost

Posted on | October 10, 2011 | 27 Comments

by Smitty

Reading this post over at Protein Wisdom, I was struck by the thought that it sure is swell, as the country seems to be sinking into ‘anarchy’, as winked at by the POTUS, that the country has dropped bazillions of dollars into the FBI &c over the years.

As the protestors brazenly consider upping their game and going after private citizens and property, it is comforting to know that our various law enforcement and Homeland Security agencies have our backs.

Yeah, it sure is good to know that all the people who have sworn to support and defend the Constitution, in various elected and appointed offices, as well as those paid from public tax dollars to keep the home fires safe, are johnny-on-the-spot about a widespread meltdown that is being slowly, stupidly, crap-on-cruisers-ly executed by these nitwits.

And the media is going to hold everybody accountable–this we know. If the police feel like doing their job with a little too much vigor, we can expect fair, balanced, and accurate accounting for all.

One rests comfortably knowing that, when the anarchy goes down, our government will totally be there.

Update: more at The Lonely Conservative.

Category: #Occupy, Progressivism

BailoutCost.Com

Posted on | October 10, 2011 | 2 Comments

by Smitty

The idea of the bailout was false to begin with. Go to this site and Tweet/FB/email it to the universe.

We don’t want the administration to think that all of the attention on Solyndra and Fast & Fumbled means that people are distracted from the bailouts and ObamaCare.
More at the Tatler and Director Blue.

Category: Scandal

Hitler Finds Out That #OWS Is The New #AttaaaaackWaaaaatch

Posted on | October 10, 2011 | 5 Comments

by Smitty

Via the iOwnTheWorld and Left-Wing Institute For Civil Discourse

And, with apologies to Mac Davis:

[Chorus]: Oh Lord it’s hard to be Hitler
when you’re risible in every way.
I hate to browse to YouTube
cause I get re-beclowned each day.
To know me is to kick me
I must be in hell, ask a man.
Oh Lord it’s hard to be Hitler
but I’m doing the penance I can.

I used to have a girlfriend
but she just couldn’t compete
with all of these nutcase Lefty women
who keep clamoring at my feet.
Well I prob’ly could find me another
but I guess they’re all in awe of me.
Who cares, I’ll just stay loathsome
sheeples don’t deserve my company.

[Chorus]

I guess you could say I’m a Lefty,
a fascist, power-mad and proud.
I could have lots of friends if I want to
but they all sound just like Maureen Dowd.
Some folks say that I’m megalomaniacal.
Hell, I don’t even know what that means.
I guess it has something to do with the way that I
deliver meaningless speeches by reams.

[Chorus]

Category: Progressivism, Video

Meanwhile, On the Campaign Trail … UPDATE: New Santorum Radio Ad in Iowa Hits Herman Cain for TARP Support UPDATE: No Mercy for Perrybots

Posted on | October 10, 2011 | 61 Comments

Reporters from The Times of London and The New Republic interview
J.D. Gordon, communications director for the Herman Cain campaign,
at the Pentagon City Costco in Arlington, Va., Friday Oct. 7

If nothing else, the “Occupy Wall Street” protests give the media a reason to ignore the GOP presidential campaign, and to avoid discussion of the increasing possibility that Herman Cain could be the Last Man Standing in the conservative grassroots battle to stop Mitt Romney from getting the nomination on the basis of the Republican Establishment’s “It’s His Turn” principle. “Sunshine State Sarah” has a nice round-up of Cain campign news today, and reminds me of something I wrote Friday:

You may have noticed that some of our Republican friends seemed to lose interest in the GOP nomination fight just about the time Rick Perry melted down and Herman Cain surged into contender status. These people are already making peace with the idea of Romney carrying the 2012 Republican banner.

There was a time, barely a month ago, when these friends of mine seemed to be convinced, and were trying to convince everybody else, that a Perry-Romney showdown for the nomination was a fait accompli, so that supporters of all the other candidates might as well pack it in and quit now. The collapse of the Perry bubble has embarrassed a lot of people, including those who accused Michelle Malkin of “bad faith” and lacking “intelligence and integrity.”

The Perrybots’ response to political demoralization has been a sort of Kübler-Ross grieving process and, while I’ve had occasion to point out that I predicted Perry’s collapse, I don’t blame the bandwagon-jumpers for thinking they were rolling to inevitable victory. It seemed logical, after all, that the Texas governor would be a strong voice for conservative values with the necessary skills, money and campaign organization to take on the brutally efficient Romney machine. We really can’t blame Perry’s supporters for the unfortunate fact that the candidate they supported turned out to be a doomed and useless dingbat.

A new Bloomberg/WaPo poll has the GOP race at Romney 24%, Cain 16%, Perry 13% and this is a result no one could have predicted a month ago. (Taegan Goddard notes that Jon Huntsman got zero support in this new poll.) Where the campaign stands now, and how Cain may fare in the weeks ahead, is the subject of my American Spectator column today:

People stood in line for more than an hour Friday at the Costco discount store in the Pentagon City complex of Arlington, Virginia, across the river from D.C. At the front of the line was the man they had come to see, who smiled and chatted cheerfully as he signed his autograph on the first page of his new book, This Is Herman Cain!
The exclamation point serves as a fitting symbol of the shock among the political class at how far Cain has come along the path described by his book’s subtitle: “My Journey to the White House.” The Atlanta businessman’s sharp rise in national polls since winning a Florida GOP straw poll on Sept. 24 has left pundits of all persuasions struggling to explain how a candidate so recently rated somewhere between “long shot” and “no chance” could have suddenly emerged as a contender. Even Cain — who has said all along that he was “in it to win it” — seems slightly surprised by how quickly he’s jumped to second place in the Republican field, edging past Texas Gov. Rick Perry and closing the gap with the front-runner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Although he has “enjoyed a phenomenal surge within the last couple of weeks,” Cain told reporters after his Friday book signing, his campaign “has gradually built momentum” for several months. His stunning breakthrough last month in Orlando, where the Republican straw poll delegates gave him more votes than Perry and Romney combined, has kicked that slow-building momentum into overdrive. And the question now is whether he can sustain his surging momentum or whether Cain, who has never before held elected office, will become just another “flavor of the week” in the see-saw GOP campaign. . . .

Please read the whole thing. I’ve got more photos and videos to upload, and there’s more campaign news to share, but I’ll add that in updates.

UPDATE: One of the things I foreshadowed in this morning’s column was an expectation that Rick Santorum was ready to go on the attack against Cain:

The Pennsylvanian is one of the few Republican candidates who hasn’t yet gotten a “flavor of the week” moment and, with another round of debates Tuesday in Hanover, N.H., and Oct. 18 in Las Vegas, Santorum may be foremost among those looking to throw a few rhetorical punches toward the surging Cain.

And this afternoon came the news that Santorum has released a radio ad — with a $30,000 buy in Iowa — that includes a shot at Cain for supporting the 2008 TARP bailout. As the Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake says, Santorum thus “effectively becomes the first major candidate to attack Cain.”

Cain has said he knows he’s got a target on his back now, and we’ll see how well he handles it in the debates Tuesday (Hanover, N.H., on Bloomberg TV) and Oct. 18 in Las Vegas. I have previously remarked that Santorum has proven himself a “brutal counter-puncher in debates.” He has been bumping along in single digits in the polls, waiting for his shot, and talking to him Friday at the Values Voters Summit, I got the sense he was ready to make a move.

UPDATE II: Here are a couple of videos from Herman Cain’s book-signing event Friday in Arlington. First, I spotted some familiar faces in the line at Costco:

And here is Cain, after the book-signing and his Q&A with reporters, talking about his “phenomenal surge” in the campaign:

UPDATE III: The latest poll in New Hampshire puts Romney (of course) first at 38%, followed by Cain at 20% and Allahpundit describes how far Rick Perry has fallen:

Perry clocks in at four percent, tied for fifth with Huntsman behind Romney, Cain, Paul, and Gingrich at five percent. Four percent is also what he polled in last week’s WMUR survey of New Hampshire likely voters, so in case you were thinking of discarding that one as an outlier, think again. This guy is, for the moment, on life support in one of the big five early-primary states . . .

Allah goes to great lengths trying to imagine a comeback strategy for Perry, but . . . Dude. When your “conservative” Republican front-runner candidate is tied with Jon Huntsman, it’s over.

UPDATE IV: A commenter objects to my employing the phrase “useless dingbat” to describe Rick Perry. This required an explanation in the comments, which I’ll repeat up here for the benefit of anyone who might be curious:

“Useless dingbat” is a phrase borrowed from Hunter S. Thompson’s description of Ed Muskie in 1972. If you haven’t read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, you probably didn’t notice the parallels between Perry’s meltdown in the Orlando debate and Muskie’s infamous “Sunshine Special” debacle. But I noticed the parallel, and the idea of describing Perry in similar terms as Thompson described Muskie was inspired by that parallel.
Given how Perry’s supporters spent the first six weeks of his campaign personally savaging anyone who criticized Perry — including Michelle Malkin — I’m not in much of mood to hear pleas for mercy from Perrybots now that their candidate is doomed beyond hope of recovery.

I warned readers in early August of my concerns about the Perry campaign. Little notice was paid to my warning, while other blogs were urging everybody to jump on that $17 million bandwagon. So if the Perrybots are feeling butt-hurt now, that’s not my fault. You chumps need to go ask Erick Erickson why he didn’t warn you that Perry couldn’t debate his way out of a wet paper sack.

UPDATE V: Having mentioned my warnings, let’s take a stroll down memory lane, why don’t we? On Aug. 5 — the third day of my Iowa trip — I wrote:

Having Rick Perry’s potential campaign looming on the horizon casts a certain shadow over the proceedings here.

Perry’s supporters were running TV ads in Iowa in the run-up to the Ames Straw Poll, even though (a) Perry was not yet officially a candidate; and (b) Perry wasn’t participating in the straw poll.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Who does a thing like that? Later that day (Aug. 5 was a Friday), I posted:

My phone just rang with a tip from a source who says his Texas sources tell him that Rick Perry is going to unofficially announce this weekend that he’s going to make an official announcement next week.

Which was pretty close to right: The “unofficial” word went out Monday, and the official announcement was . . . Saturday, Aug. 13, the same day as the Ames Straw Poll, a deliberate diss to Iowa and an attempt to upstage the other candidates already in the race.

Again: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Four days later (Tuesday, Aug. 9), I encountered “Americans for Perry” campaigning at what was supposed to be a Tim Pawlenty event:

Yeah, I know political journalists aren’t supposed to believe in “omens.” Still, there’s something vaguely . . . hinky about the way Perry’s stealth campaign has been operating here in Iowa.
Call me crazy. Attribute my forebodings of doom to irrational prejudice. Say what you will, and I don’t care, but I felt a need to put on the record my instinctive sense that there’s something fundamentally wrong about the Perry campaign. And if Jan. 20, 2013, brings the joyous inauguration of President Perry, then you can say my fears were mistaken. Yet I can’t shake my gut hunch is that it won’t work out that way. Some kind of catastrophe will result, one way or another.

And in response to a comment by Steven in TN, I explained:

There have been a few little things — including one source who says Perry has been on the wrong side of the eminent-domain issue — that lead me to think Perry is a lot less certain ultimately to win the nomination than some people seem to think. What I fear will happen is that Perry will spend several months sucking up media oxygen and burning through GOP donor cash, only to collapse early next year. This will have the effect of suffocating other conservative candidates, and thereby lead to … Romney 2012.
Understand, Steve: I’m not exactly anti-Perry. I got nothing against him personally or ideologically, and many of my Texas friends swear by the guy. But in my experience, when something looks too good to be true, it usually is. And there is a too-good-to-be-true vibe to this idea of “Perry to the Rescue.” Maybe my Jedi senses are wrong this time, but I’ve got a spooky bad feeling and I just can’t shake it.

I stuck by that prediction without apology, and on Aug. 28 — while Perry was building a huge lead on Romney in the polls — I re-iterated:

Go back to what first concerned me: Why would a Republican campaign go out of its way to “diss” the Iowa GOP in that manner? It is one thing for a candidate like Mitt Romney to de-emphasize Iowa, skip the straw poll and concentrate his efforts elsewhere. It was another thing — an unnecessarily provocative thing — for Perry’s campaign to deliberately upstage the Ames Straw Poll the way it did.
And who was the primary victim of that gesture? Michele Bachmann.
Bachmann won the straw poll, thereby destroying Tim Pawlenty’s campaign, but no sooner had the Republican 2012 herd been thinned by the culling of its weakest candidate — Pawlenty was always weak — than Perry jumped in and vaulted to the front of the pack. This put Perry ahead of other candidates who had spent many months criss-crossing the country and shaking hands with folks at county GOP events and hustling up contributions $50 and $100 at a time.
OK, fine. Congratulations to Team Perry on their Instant Front-Runner status. But I again repeat that I’m getting bad vibes about this development. When all is said and done, my early sense of foreboding will either be vindicated or discredited.

And I think we see which way matters are tending, eh? Perry stuck his thumb in Iowa’s eye, and it was the kind of bullying gesture that seemed to me so ill-advised as to raise serious doubts. There was more than that, though.

Before Perry ever got in the race, I had talked to an operative who had met Perry and worked with him in Texas. The operative said that (a) Perry was not a dynamic speaker, and (b) Perry was “uncomfortable in his own skin.” My source wasn’t very specific about what that last remark meant, but once the debates started, I could see what he was talking about.

And here’s the thing: My source was not anti-Perry. He liked the guy, but was being frank in expressing doubts as to whether Perry could make it at the presidential level.

The worst of it, though, was the godawful defensiveness of Perry’s supporters. For about six weeks there, anybody who criticized Perry got ripped to shreds because (so the Perry supporters had convinced themselves) Perry was the only alternative to Romney.

Ergo, if Bachmann hit Perry on the Gardasil thing, or if Santorum slammed Perry on immigration, Bachmann and Santorum were de facto Romney allies, and must be destroyed. All of that venom directed at Perry’s critics — including Streiff’s vicious attack on Michelle Malkin — did nothing to help Perry, however.

In fact, once Perry started freefalling, nothing could help him. So Perry’s defenders were just wasting their time and energy defending him, and the parallels to Ed Muskie’s startling collapse in 1972 were hard to ignore.

Watching Allahpundit trying to think up ways that Perry could possibly recover . . . Well, it’s painful, is what it is, because it’s not going to happen, and I think even Allahpundit knows that. Nevertheless, it’s good to see Team Perry finally start spending some of the millions they’ve collected to run TV ads attacking Mitt Romney:

Why did Team Perry wait nearly two months into their campaign to do this? If the argument for their candidate is “He Can Beat Mitt,” why not, y’know, start beating Mitt?

But never mind. I don’t know nothing about politics. And here’s some sad news for you Perrybots:

As poll numbers drop, Perry
pushed to side of debate stage

UPDATE VI: Ace continues his Kübler-Ross process:

I really hope Perry gets his act together and soon. There are debates scheduled for this week and next. With the primary schedule getting ever more condensed, it’s getting late pretty early for Perry.

Ace seems to be making the assumption that Cain can’t possibly go the distance and beat Romney. But nobody ever thought Cain would get this far, did they? Having covered Cain for 10 months, I’ve been hearing the “Cain can’t win” argument for 10 months. Maybe the people who keep saying “Cain can’t win” are right.

But Herman Cain just keeps on winning, doesn’t he?

Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum

FMJRA 2.0: Happy Columbus Day!

Posted on | October 10, 2011 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


SARAH PALIN WILL NOT RUN FOR PRESIDENT

The Herman Cain Story

Dennis The Constitutional Peasant Lives! UPDATE: Ali Akbar Says ‘Rep. Lewis, Come On Down’

Attention

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Republican Ted Cruz

‘Partisan Koch-Brothers Style Attack’

LIVE AT FIVEEIGHT – 10.02.11

Tuning Up the World’s Smallest Violin

No Joy (McCann) in Mudville

Looking Up From Here

When It Rains

What She Said

Rick Perry Dissed by ‘Most Influential Blog in the Conservative Movement’

Not A Failure Of Imagination

LIVE AT FIVE – 10.04.11

CHRISTIE SAYS ‘NO’ (AGAIN)
UPDATE: ‘Now Is Not My Time’

David Brooks: ‘You Know Who Has Some Sharp Pants Creases? Mitt Romney!’

They Told Glenn Reynolds …

New Polls Confirm Presidential Surge of Best-Selling Author Herman Cain

CAMPAIGN FOCUS: Will Rick Santorum Be the Next GOP ‘Flavor of the Week’?

Gingrich Uses ‘Accountable’ In The Context Of The Obama Administration

LIVE AT FIVE – 10.05.11

Ezra Klein: Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan Shows ‘Lack of Policy Seriousness’

Hicks: BHO’s Class Warrior Schtick

You Can’t Have Your Cow And Milk It

Why Dan Balz Is Wrong

RINO-Lanche: Three ‘Evil State’ Republicans Endorse Mitt Romney

I’m Thinking About Writing a Novel Called ‘Two-Faced Backstabbing RINO Bitch’

LIVE AT FIVE – 10.06.11

Phrases Without Intellectual Content

Some Better Ideas For Primaries

BLAME ME!

Long Before The Infamous Speedo

#OccupyWallNuts Continue Their Epic Struggle Against That One Thing

Storm Center: J.D. Gordon Takes Charge as Herman Cain Communications Director

Major National Gathering of Conservative Bloggers Will Include Everyone But Me

Pat Condell Offering Simple, Sad Truth

INSANITY IS HEREDITARY

Herman Cain in D.C. Area Today

LIVE AT FIVE – 10.07.11

What Cynthia Said

Cain: The Last Hope Against Romney?

EXCLUSIVE: Rick Santorum Interview

#OccupyWallStreet As A Preview Of GOP 2012 Triumph

Memo From the National Affairs Desk to the Herman Cain Presidential Campaign

Conventional Wisdom on Herman Cain

BLAME FLORIDA!

#OccupyIowahawk

PAULBOT-MANIA: Ron Paul Supporters Buy Victory in ‘Value Voters’ Straw Poll

#VVS11: Campaign Spin Wars Follow Values Voters Summit Straw Poll

‘This Was Supposed To Be Our Chance To Disarm The American People’

‘Veering Into Incoherence’?

The Awful Burden of Influence

. . .And The Government You Elected Is Occupying Your Bank. Go Figure.

Don’t Get Castroated

The Crazy Guy at The American Spectator Who Made the Big Headlines …

In Praise Of Gridlock

Go Darrell Go!

Who Said It? July 14: ‘I No Longer See A Path To Victory For Herman Cain’

The Crazy Guy At The American Spectator Who Made The Big Headlines…

Candy Crowley, Your Ignorant Toolishness Is On Display


Top linkers this week:

  1. The Lonely Conservative (12)
  2. Da Tech Guy (10)
  3. (tie) Don Surber and Truth Before Dishonor (9)
  4. Daily Pundit (8)
  5. Conservative Commune (7)
  6. Rio Norte Line (6)
  7. (tie) Herman Cain PAC and The Camp Of The Saints


Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! To be included in next week’s FMJRA, and you’re using Blogger or some other blogware that WordPress hates, please e-mail your links to me by October 14 with “FMJRA” and/or “Shameless Blogwhoring” in the subject line.

Category: FMJRA Award

#OccupyWallStreet = DIE, YOU COWARDLY COMMIE SCUM!

Posted on | October 10, 2011 | 38 Comments

Now that I’ve got your attention, you miserable gutless Marxist swine, let me invite you to explain this photo:

A friend sent me that photo via Twitter, which inspired me to do a bit of Googling. Here is the  PDF of the Workers World Party announcement of their national conference (note the tributes to Che Guevara) and here, in its entirety, is their call to action:

SOCIALIST CONFERENCE TO STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH OCCUPY WALL STREET,
Oct. 8 & 9

Abolish Capitalism,
Fight for Socialism

In the Spirit of Troy Davis:
“Dismantle this unjust system”
The struggle to build a fight back against capitalism and for a socialist future is the theme of the Workers World Party conference this weekend in the South Bronx. Many of the participants have also been part of Occupy Wall Street.
This revolutionary conference will take up: understanding the global capitalist crisis from a Marxist perspective, fighting racism and imperialist wars, as well as a tribute to death row hero Troy Davis.
Conference organizers have enthusiastically shifted plans to include taking time to go to Wall Street to join the occupation Saturday night and Sunday when the conference adjourns. WWP strongly operates under the firm conviction that revolutionary theory is part of the living struggle in order to pose a real challenge to the capitalist system.
Workers World organizers are urging conference participants coming in from around the country as well as New Yorkers to join the Friday, Oct 7, 5 p.m. March across the Brooklyn Bridge to Wall Street, organized by the Haitian Community under the slogan Don’t Occupy Haiti! Occupy Wall Street!
The Conference is scheduled to open at 9 a.m. in the South Bronx at the Paul Robeson Auditorium at East 140th St and Morris Ave. A day of discussing the global crisis and how to fight for peoples immediate needs will be mixed with understanding the fight for a socialist future in workshops and panels.
On Saturday evening at 7 p.m., participants will take the #4 train directly to the Wall Street subway stop to again join in Solidarity with the Occupation.
The conference will reconvene on Sunday morning at 9:30. It will close at 1:30 in order to enable activists from around the county to join the Wall Street Occupation. A Socialist Solidarity delegation will head to the #4 train down to Wall Street with food and materials.
The WWP National conference is dedicated to the revolutionary internationalist Che Guevara, who was martyred on Oct 8, 1967. Besides paying tribute to Guevara and Troy Davis, the conference will also honor the great actor and activist, Paul Robeson and WWP founding member and chairperson, Sam Marcy.
Updates on the Workers World Party Conference schedule and program will be found at: WorkersWorld.net
Read more at workers.org
Register Online Here for 2011 WWP Conference
Breakfast, lunch and snacks are all available at the auditorium.
Take the # 4, 5 trains to East 138th St. & Grand Concourse or the #6 train to East 138th St and Third Ave.

Walk 3 blocks to East 140th St and Morris Ave. to Paul Robeson Center.
Free Parking on the streets in the location of the conference is easily available.

Here is the link for a promotional video for the Workers World conference. Please distribute widely.

http://www.youtube.com/user/PeoplesVideo?feature=mhee#p/a/u/0/2vacMrkPEXk

Workers World Party

55 W 17th St
New York, NY 10011
212-627-2994
Fax 212-675-7869
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: workersworld.net/wwp
Workers World Newspaper: www.workers.org
Contact a Workers World branch near you!

So, you worthless Commie thugs, which is it? Are the “Occupy Wall Street” protests a thoroughly mainstream event — for so the liberal media has repeatedly assured us — or is it a revolutionary movement? Because I know all about the history of the WWP, and they are the furthest thing in the world from a “mainstream” organization.

Ever since the Tea Party movement began in 2009, the media have relentlessly used guilt-by-association smears to portray the Tea Party as dangerous and disreputable extremists. How many hundreds of thousands of words have liberal journalists expended on this theme? How often have we seen the Tea Party depicted as a tool of the Koch Brothers?

And yet you — you unwashed punks of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement — get no such scrutiny from the press. Are the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press and the major TV networks doing stories about how a Marxist-Leninist organization like the WWP is calling for “solidarity” with your protests as part of their “the fight for a socialist future”?

I think not.

Kevin Martin writes at Big Government:

While the President, liberal Democrats, union leaders and some in the media have tried to convince Americans that this is  a grassroots movement that is raging against corporate greed on Wall Street and is being led by disenfranchised Americans, the truth of the matter is that this is the usual bunch of suspects on the far left such as International ANSWER, Code Pink, the Communist Party USA, and the Workers World Party, to name a few — a loose coalition of anarchist groups and angry trust-fund babies looking for their lot in life.

Zombie has a photo feature about the “Occupy San Francisco” protests. If those losers represent “99%” of Americans, we’re doomed.

UPDATE: Just in case some liberal network types (who haven’t reported a word about the WWP’s call for “solidarity” with “Occupy Wall Street”) are reading this, here’s the WWP’s YouTube video announcement:

They’re making it easy for you, see? But you’re too lazy and/or dishonest to tell the American people what “Occupy Wall Street” is really about.

Category: #Occupy, Media Bias

‘Mr. Cain, Who Is Lawrence O’Donnell to Tell You How to Be a Black Man?’

Posted on | October 10, 2011 | 65 Comments

After Thursday evening’s “interview” on MSNBC, Professor William Jacobson and others were outraged by Lawrence O’Donnell’s self-righteous and disrespectful hectoring of Herman Cain.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So when the surging GOP presidential candidate agreed to take questions from reporters at his book-signing Friday at the Pentagon City Costco in Arlington, Virginia, I asked the question that many others were asking:

My question comes at about the one-minute mark of the video.

RSM: Mr. Cain, who is Lawrence O’Donnell to tell you how to be a black man?
CAIN: “It’s an absurd thing to try and do, isn’t it? I mean, for Lawrence O’Donnell to try and challenge me on what was I doing during the civil rights movement, that’s about as ridiculous as me asking him, ‘What were you doing when you were in kindergarten?’ The two things don’t even relate to one another. So, you’re right — his attempt to do that failed, in my opinion.”

While I certainly do not wish to accuse O’Donnell of raaaaacism, the way he treated Cain on MSNBC was typical of the let-me-tell-you-what-to-think attitude of elite liberalism. In the minds of liberals, anyone who disputes their pre-conceived narrative — whether about history, economics, foreign policy, race relations or anything else — is not merely wrong, but evil.

That is to say, on any issue that liberals care about, there is exactly one point of view that all people of good faith must share, and anyone who expresses skepticism toward the Official Liberal Viewpoint is presumed to be acting on secret motives of bad faith (mala fides).

So if you dispute, for example, the Official Liberal Viewpoint on “climate change” (anthropogenic global warming), their certainty of your wrongness leads them immediately to provide an explanation for why you are wrong. You may be merely too stupid to grasp the “consensus,” but it’s also possible that you have hidden motives — corporate greed! religious extremism! — that inspire your opposition to the Official Liberal Viewpoint.

This intolerance of dissent is especially characteristic of those liberals who, like O’Donnell, come from privileged upbringings where liberalism functions as a sort of noblesse oblige, and who therefore pre-emptively condemn conservatives as guilty of an indifference to the suffering and hardship of the downtrodden.

For a Boston Democrat of the My-Daddy’s-a-Lawyer variety like Lawrence O’Donnell, Herman Cain’s refusal to accept the Civil Rights Victimhood narrative — the only template for race relations that liberals understand — is a personal insult.

Marooned in Marin was at the Costco book-signing and captured my question from the opposite angle, where you can see my son Jefferson (in the red tie) standing next to me:

Marooned in Marin has lots more photos of the Costco event. Such was the reaction to O’Donnell’s insultingly high-handed lecture to Cain that O’Donnell spent a good chunk of his Friday show trying to un-dig the hole he’d put himself into. And in this video from Friday, you’ll hear a familiar voice at the 2:48 mark:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tommy Christopher at Mediaite chronicles O’Donnell’s crow-eating smorgasbord:

With the benefit of hindsight, O’Donnell told Melissa Harris-Perry that he didn’t “want to oversimplify the menu of choice that existed for black families in the South at that time,” although that’s exactly what he had done when he suggested that Cain “sat on the sidelines” rather than participating in demonstrations.
Harris-Perry wisely identified the problem with the manner of O’Donnell’s questions. She said that she was “squirming with discomfort” while watching the interview, and in explaining that discomfort, kindly employed the “royal we,” rather than point the finger directly at her colleague. “When we are not facing the lynchers’ noose,” she said, ”when we are not facing that imminent violence, ourselves, we have to be extremely careful about even the implication that those who did not participate were necessarily cowards.”
She pointed out that “it was always simply a minority of African-Americans who were engaged at any point in the civil rights movement because it was a life and death question.” . . .
Harris-Perry also nailed the inherently racist double-standard embedded in the Civil Rights line of questioning. “I can`t remember anyone ever asking a white politician who is of the same age where they were during the sit ins. As you pointed out in your interview, there were white students who came down to be part of freedom summer. There were white allies at every point.”
“Yet we don’t consider it a litmus test for white politicians to have had enough moral courage, ethical vision and American value to have participated actively in the civil rights movement,” she continued, pointing out that military service is a common such litmus test. “I”m worried when we don’t ask white politicians about their patriotism related to how they have or have not stood up for racial equality.”

Like Herman Cain, I am a native of Atlanta, where Henry Grady’s post-Reconstruction “New South” message of economic growth was first proclaimed, and where Booker T. Washington famously urged American businessmen not to rely on immigrant labor, but rather to “cast down your bucket where you are” by employing black workers. During the civil rights era, Atlanta was proud to be “The City Too Busy to Hate.”

Having been quite literally in kindergarten the year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, my personal memories of that era are necessarily limited. However, it has always seemed to me that decent law-abiding people — working hard to support their families and do the right thing in their everyday lives — need make no apologies to anyone.

Politics isn’t the entirety of our existence and we should keep in mind Eric Vogelin’s warning not to immanentize the eschaton. Quiet acts of Christian goodwill done by such ordinary Americans are not recorded in the pages of history books, and were not front-page headlines in 1964, but nevertheless it should be obvious to anyone with common sense that Rosa Parks and Bull Connor are not the whole story of the civil rights era.

UPDATE (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers!

UPDATE II (RSM): Jehuda the Rhetorican credits me with the press conference “question of the year.” Hey, just doing my job — speaking of which, there’s lots more campaign news today.

UPDATE III: Linked by The Lonely Conservative, William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection and Obi’s Sister.


Category: Herman Cain, MSNBC

A Tough Ad For Romney

Posted on | October 10, 2011 | 22 Comments

by Smitty

Perry goes jugular here:

If you’re a Mitt supporter, this is an opportunity for him to respond with a speech that puts the question to bed.

Advice to Mitt: go Tea Party in a big way here. If the base considers you a Ruling Class tool, you’re not going to get the support you need. Restated: perfect hair and National Greatness conservativism are a variation on the theme of Progressivism that has put us in this toilet bowl. You need to distance yourself from that.

(via Beregond on Twitter)

The Left Coast Rebel offers more Romeny tough love. Who is harder on Mitt, the Right or the Left?

Category: Mitt Romney
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